William Cummings
Biographic Data
| ID | 550030 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Cummings |
| GIVEN NAMES | William |
| FAMILY NAME | Cummings |
| SIGNATURE | CUMMINGS W |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1. [email protected] |
| ORCID | 0009-0005-5431-9273 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Black Sun, affect and cross-cultural incommensurability
Koreyoshi Kurahara’s raucous, disorienting and confounding 1964 film Black Sun challenges viewers’ efforts to find meaning. The film privileges our affective experience over our cognitive ability to make sense of what we see and hear. This article explores the dynamic surrounding meaning and affect in Black Sun through a close reading of three connected foci: jazz, Blackness and salvation. It concludes by linking our affective dislocation as a vi…
Biblical Traces in a Muslim Chronicle from Makasar, Indonesia
This article argues that the Gowa Chronicle, written in the staunchly-Islamic kingdom of Makasar, South Sulawesi, contains a surprising passage adapted from the parables of the Christian gospels. This article examines the historical and literary evidence to make the argument that one of the most significant and memorable events recorded in the chronicle hinges on the use of a Biblical literary device. The likely architect of this cross-cultural b…
The Makassar Annals
Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclips…
The Makassar annals
Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclips…
A chain of kings: The Makassarese chronicles of Gowa and Talloq
The chronicles of Gowa and Talloq are the most important historical sources for the study of pre-colonial Makassar. They have provided the basic framework and much of the information that we possess about the origins, growth, and expansion of Gowa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period Gowa and its close ally Talloq became the most powerful force in the eastern Indonesian archipelago, and historians have relied heavily…
A Chain of Kings: The Makassarese Chronicles of Gowa and Talloq
seas, and this generally refers to Malays.
Islam, Empire and Makassarese historiography in the reign of Sultan Ala'uddin (1593–1639)
During the reign of Sultan Ala'uddin (r. 1593–1639), the Makassarese of Gowa and Talloq initiated a new form of historical writing known as lontaraq bilang. This article argues that this genre represents an Islamic form of historical writing that simultaneously integrated distant places and events within the structure of Makassarese history and Makassarese people and practices within the umma and the structure of Islamic history. Examining this i…
Historical texts as social maps; Lontaraq bilang in early modern Makassar
Historical texts as social maps Lontaraq bilang in early modern MakassarOne fascinating development in seventeenth-century Makassar is the evolution of a written form of record-keeping known collectively as lontaraq bilang.Meaning literally 'counting manuscripts', lontaraq bilang have been termed 'diaries' but are better understood as a public record of notable events than as a diary or journal of an individual's private thoughts.For this reason …
Orientalism's Corporeal Dimension: Tattooed Bodies and Eighteenth-Century Oceans
Orientalism’s Corporeal Dimension William Cummings Thomas Ellison, the youngest of the Bounty’s sailors, was hanged in Portsmouth on the morning of October 29th, 1792. On his right arm he had a date tattooed: 25 October 1788. Almost exactly four years before, that was the day the Bounty first sighted Tahiti (Dening 1992: 36). Emblematic of a widespread trend, it was the late eighteenth century when European sailors began to return from overseas w…
Rethinking the Imbrication of Orality and Literacy: Historical Discourse in Early Modern Makassar
In the sixteenth century, Makassarese in the South Sulawesi courts of Gowa and Talloq began to write. What they chose to write were historical texts that chronicled their origins and preserved the words of their ancestors. Scholars once knew how to make sense of such an event: it could not be but a watershed, a fundamental change or turning point of the first magnitude. Such is the nature of what we liked to call the "transition from orality to l…
The Shifting Foundations of Social Capital Formation in the Pacific Basin: Towards More Autonomous Personalities
Whereas past accounts of the Pacific Basin stressed the penchant for orderliness and control including the tendency to use values education to shape habits of national loyalty and obedience, the élite respondents of the 21 settings participating in the Sigma survey suggest a new era may be emerging with an increased emphasis on personal autonomy and responsibility. Looking to the future in the Pacific Basin, the élites indicate that values of nat…
The Dynamics of Resistance and Emulation in Makassarese History
This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and ri…
Scripting Islamization: Arabic Texts in Early Modern Makassar
This article argues for a reconceptualization of the process of religious conversion based on local perceptions rather than assuming that conversion is a matter of replacing old beliefs with new ones. In the case of seventeenth-century Makassar, Indonesia, Islam was perceived as a matter of texts. Not a set of doctrines or beliefs to be adopted, Islam inhered in its language, spoken and written. Uttering Arabic and possessing spiritually potent r…
Education in Contemporary Japan: Inequality and Diversity
Introduction 1. Analytical frameworks: schooling and the society 2. Development of modern schooling 3. Students' experiences of schooling I: social groups 4. Students' experiences of schooling II: minorities 5. Teachers' experiences of schooling 6. Problems and reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Conclusion
"Only one people but two rulers"; Hiding the past in seventeenth-century Makasarese chronicles
Comparing the effectiveness and costs of different approaches for educating primary school teachers in Sri Lanka
Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School
Journal Article Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School Get access Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School. By Cumming William. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984. 239 pp. Illustrations. $16.95.) George A. Frykman George A. Frykman Washington State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 1986, Pag…
Scripting Islamization: Arabic Texts in Early Modern Makassar
This article argues for a reconceptualization of the process of religious conversion based on local perceptions rather than assuming that conversion is a matter of replacing old beliefs with new ones. In the case of seventeenth-century Makassar, Indonesia, Islam was perceived as a matter of texts. Not a set of doctrines or beliefs to be adopted, Islam inhered in its language, spoken and written. Uttering Arabic and possessing spiritually potent r…
Comparing the effectiveness and costs of different approaches for educating primary school teachers in Sri Lanka
Rethinking the Imbrication of Orality and Literacy: Historical Discourse in Early Modern Makassar
In the sixteenth century, Makassarese in the South Sulawesi courts of Gowa and Talloq began to write. What they chose to write were historical texts that chronicled their origins and preserved the words of their ancestors. Scholars once knew how to make sense of such an event: it could not be but a watershed, a fundamental change or turning point of the first magnitude. Such is the nature of what we liked to call the "transition from orality to l…
"Only one people but two rulers"; Hiding the past in seventeenth-century Makasarese chronicles
Historical texts as social maps; Lontaraq bilang in early modern Makassar
Historical texts as social maps Lontaraq bilang in early modern MakassarOne fascinating development in seventeenth-century Makassar is the evolution of a written form of record-keeping known collectively as lontaraq bilang.Meaning literally 'counting manuscripts', lontaraq bilang have been termed 'diaries' but are better understood as a public record of notable events than as a diary or journal of an individual's private thoughts.For this reason …
The Shifting Foundations of Social Capital Formation in the Pacific Basin: Towards More Autonomous Personalities
Whereas past accounts of the Pacific Basin stressed the penchant for orderliness and control including the tendency to use values education to shape habits of national loyalty and obedience, the élite respondents of the 21 settings participating in the Sigma survey suggest a new era may be emerging with an increased emphasis on personal autonomy and responsibility. Looking to the future in the Pacific Basin, the élites indicate that values of nat…
The Dynamics of Resistance and Emulation in Makassarese History
This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and ri…
Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School
Journal Article Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School Get access Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School. By Cumming William. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984. 239 pp. Illustrations. $16.95.) George A. Frykman George A. Frykman Washington State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 1986, Pag…
Comparing the effectiveness and costs of different approaches for educating primary school teachers in Sri Lanka
"Only one people but two rulers"; Hiding the past in seventeenth-century Makasarese chronicles
Education in Contemporary Japan: Inequality and Diversity
Introduction 1. Analytical frameworks: schooling and the society 2. Development of modern schooling 3. Students' experiences of schooling I: social groups 4. Students' experiences of schooling II: minorities 5. Teachers' experiences of schooling 6. Problems and reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Conclusion
The Dynamics of Resistance and Emulation in Makassarese History
This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and ri…
Scripting Islamization: Arabic Texts in Early Modern Makassar
This article argues for a reconceptualization of the process of religious conversion based on local perceptions rather than assuming that conversion is a matter of replacing old beliefs with new ones. In the case of seventeenth-century Makassar, Indonesia, Islam was perceived as a matter of texts. Not a set of doctrines or beliefs to be adopted, Islam inhered in its language, spoken and written. Uttering Arabic and possessing spiritually potent r…
Orientalism's Corporeal Dimension: Tattooed Bodies and Eighteenth-Century Oceans
Orientalism’s Corporeal Dimension William Cummings Thomas Ellison, the youngest of the Bounty’s sailors, was hanged in Portsmouth on the morning of October 29th, 1792. On his right arm he had a date tattooed: 25 October 1788. Almost exactly four years before, that was the day the Bounty first sighted Tahiti (Dening 1992: 36). Emblematic of a widespread trend, it was the late eighteenth century when European sailors began to return from overseas w…
Rethinking the Imbrication of Orality and Literacy: Historical Discourse in Early Modern Makassar
In the sixteenth century, Makassarese in the South Sulawesi courts of Gowa and Talloq began to write. What they chose to write were historical texts that chronicled their origins and preserved the words of their ancestors. Scholars once knew how to make sense of such an event: it could not be but a watershed, a fundamental change or turning point of the first magnitude. Such is the nature of what we liked to call the "transition from orality to l…
The Shifting Foundations of Social Capital Formation in the Pacific Basin: Towards More Autonomous Personalities
Whereas past accounts of the Pacific Basin stressed the penchant for orderliness and control including the tendency to use values education to shape habits of national loyalty and obedience, the élite respondents of the 21 settings participating in the Sigma survey suggest a new era may be emerging with an increased emphasis on personal autonomy and responsibility. Looking to the future in the Pacific Basin, the élites indicate that values of nat…
Historical texts as social maps; Lontaraq bilang in early modern Makassar
Historical texts as social maps Lontaraq bilang in early modern MakassarOne fascinating development in seventeenth-century Makassar is the evolution of a written form of record-keeping known collectively as lontaraq bilang.Meaning literally 'counting manuscripts', lontaraq bilang have been termed 'diaries' but are better understood as a public record of notable events than as a diary or journal of an individual's private thoughts.For this reason …
A chain of kings: The Makassarese chronicles of Gowa and Talloq
The chronicles of Gowa and Talloq are the most important historical sources for the study of pre-colonial Makassar. They have provided the basic framework and much of the information that we possess about the origins, growth, and expansion of Gowa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period Gowa and its close ally Talloq became the most powerful force in the eastern Indonesian archipelago, and historians have relied heavily…
A Chain of Kings: The Makassarese Chronicles of Gowa and Talloq
seas, and this generally refers to Malays.
Islam, Empire and Makassarese historiography in the reign of Sultan Ala'uddin (1593–1639)
During the reign of Sultan Ala'uddin (r. 1593–1639), the Makassarese of Gowa and Talloq initiated a new form of historical writing known as lontaraq bilang. This article argues that this genre represents an Islamic form of historical writing that simultaneously integrated distant places and events within the structure of Makassarese history and Makassarese people and practices within the umma and the structure of Islamic history. Examining this i…
The Makassar Annals
Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclips…
The Makassar annals
Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclips…
Biblical Traces in a Muslim Chronicle from Makasar, Indonesia
This article argues that the Gowa Chronicle, written in the staunchly-Islamic kingdom of Makasar, South Sulawesi, contains a surprising passage adapted from the parables of the Christian gospels. This article examines the historical and literary evidence to make the argument that one of the most significant and memorable events recorded in the chronicle hinges on the use of a Biblical literary device. The likely architect of this cross-cultural b…
Black Sun, affect and cross-cultural incommensurability
Koreyoshi Kurahara’s raucous, disorienting and confounding 1964 film Black Sun challenges viewers’ efforts to find meaning. The film privileges our affective experience over our cognitive ability to make sense of what we see and hear. This article explores the dynamic surrounding meaning and affect in Black Sun through a close reading of three connected foci: jazz, Blackness and salvation. It concludes by linking our affective dislocation as a vi…
History (13 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · Asian Studies and History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Art (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (6 works)